Put your ideas out there. Show people tricks you’ve thought of. Advocate for policies or guidelines to improve.

If the need is there, and someone else takes up the project, it’s still a win for you. Yes it’ll be someone else’s project, but everyone will know, in a little corner of their minds, that it was you who spoke up first for the idea. Don’t waste your energy trying to stay on the cover page of all the documents. You’ll shine all the better for not being that kind of PITA.

This does not remotely get you off the hook for doing the work when it’s yours to do. But not all the ideas we have affect the parts of the world where we have the sway to make them real. They are still good ideas, but they are in someone else’s portfolio to implement. That’s OK.

You had the idea. And you sold the idea.

When it comes time to decide who’s important to the future of the enterprise, those are two tendrils of root you’ve put down, with just one idea.